Why do developers assume people are using Xbox controllers?

[Biscy]

I just find it odd that most games only support prompts for an Xbox controller as opposed to xbox and ps. While I can respect that xbox are technically the only controller to be officially supported by windows without third part software I'm sure devs are smart enough to know that not all gamers use an xbox controller.

I've had several times when in a game I will have a brain fart where it will pop-up to say 'press this input to do so and so' and It takes a moment to register that its whatever button it is on a ps controller.

I mean its not like it really bothers me as I'm now used to translating 'B' to 'Circle' or 'LB' to 'L1' and so on. I just never really understood why its only set to xbox inputs when there are plenty other peripherals out there.

[Satoru]

Microsoft abandoned the Direct Input API for XInput once the Xbox was released which happened around DX8-9

Xinput was the only API suported on many MS supported IDE like XNA

Xinput also totally sucked because the only API calls you could make mapped directly to the xbox controller. You could never extend it, put more buttons, more control schemes etc.

This effectively destroyed the 3rd party controller market as there was no way to now differentiate your controller from the Xbox controller which was now ubiquitous due to the xbox itself.

Basically MS told devs in an indirect way "Eventhough Xinput is totally inferior to DirectInput in every single way possible, you will use Xinput or GTFO"

[dubstepdeejay]

引用自 Satoru：

Microsoft abandoned the Direct Input API for XInput once the Xbox was released which happened around DX8-9

Xinput was the only API suported on many MS supported IDE like XNA

Xinput also totally sucked because the only API calls you could make mapped directly to the xbox controller. You could never extend it, put more buttons, more control schemes etc.

This effectively destroyed the 3rd party controller market as there was no way to now differentiate your controller from the Xbox controller which was now ubiquitous due to the xbox itself.

Basically MS told devs in an indirect way "Eventhough Xinput is totally inferior to DirectInput in every single way possible, you will use Xinput or GTFO"

Thank you for this explaination. Always knew it was M$ saying something like, "You're playing games on Windows, so we feel it's best to use our controller. Thank you for the fifty dollars."

[BulletPloofFloof]

I was wondering the same thing, recently purchased a bunch of games in the holiday sale and for the life of me, cannot get my old Saitek controller to work with them. Granted, the thing is 15 years old, but it has worked faithfully until now. I can't seem to get the drivers to run anymore on Win7 64bit, and I'm going to have to break down and buy an Xbox controller. My husband still uses his 20-year old flightstick for older games, but even it isn't supported on modern games anymore. BUY MORE, CONSUME. Lovely.

[Satoru]

引用自 StreuselCake：

I was wondering the same thing, recently purchased a bunch of games in the holiday sale and for the life of me, cannot get my old Saitek controller to work with them. Granted, the thing is 15 years old, but it has worked faithfully until now. I can't seem to get the drivers to run anymore on Win7 64bit, and I'm going to have to break down and buy an Xbox controller. My husband still uses his 20-year old flightstick for older games, but even it isn't supported on modern games anymore. BUY MORE, CONSUME. Lovely.

You can try launching those games through Big Picture Mode on Steam. My 'understanding' is that BPM has some kind of DirectInput->Xinput translator that seems to work sith Playstations controllers. So you might luck out that way.

https://code.google.com/p/x360ce/

x360ce is also a common way of getting old devices to work.

If your husband has a flight stick, he might be excited to see Flight SImulator X is now on Steam!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/314160/

Perhaps a good Christmas gift? :)